the worlds smallest car
#1
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the worlds smallest car
its even smaller than deek's hoohoo...barely :deek:
http://www.livescience.com/technolog...0_nanocar.html
Using the parts inside a single molecule, scientists have constructed the world's smallest car. It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece.
It'd be a real squeeze to take it for a spin, however.
The whole car is no more than 4 nanometers across. That's slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick.
Other groups have made car-shaped nanoscale objects. But this is the first one that rolls "on four wheels in a direction perpendicular to its axles," the researchers reported Thursday.
What's the point? Nanotrucks, of course.
Eventually the researchers want to build tiny trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories.
"We'd eventually like to move objects and do work in a controlled fashion on the molecular scale, and these vehicles are great test beds for that," said James Tour, a Rice University research who co-led the work. "They're helping us learn the ground rules."
The setup will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters.
The scientists had to use "scanning tunneling microscopy" to see the thing and prove that it rolls like a car.
"It's fairly easy to build nanoscale objects that slide around on a surface," said Tour's colleague Kevin Kelly. "Proving that we were rolling – not slipping and sliding – was one of the most difficult parts of this project."
So just how do you make a nanocar go?
At room temperature, strong electrical bonds hold the buckyball wheels tightly against the gold, but heating to about 200 degrees Celsius frees them to roll.
It'd be a real squeeze to take it for a spin, however.
The whole car is no more than 4 nanometers across. That's slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick.
Other groups have made car-shaped nanoscale objects. But this is the first one that rolls "on four wheels in a direction perpendicular to its axles," the researchers reported Thursday.
What's the point? Nanotrucks, of course.
Eventually the researchers want to build tiny trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories.
"We'd eventually like to move objects and do work in a controlled fashion on the molecular scale, and these vehicles are great test beds for that," said James Tour, a Rice University research who co-led the work. "They're helping us learn the ground rules."
The setup will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Nano Letters.
The scientists had to use "scanning tunneling microscopy" to see the thing and prove that it rolls like a car.
"It's fairly easy to build nanoscale objects that slide around on a surface," said Tour's colleague Kevin Kelly. "Proving that we were rolling – not slipping and sliding – was one of the most difficult parts of this project."
So just how do you make a nanocar go?
At room temperature, strong electrical bonds hold the buckyball wheels tightly against the gold, but heating to about 200 degrees Celsius frees them to roll.
#4
thats cool. but i cant drive it
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94 Chevy Blazer - brother crashed.
94 2dr accord - h22 swap, rear ended.
03 1.8 gti - waiting for her bag of chips.
:crazyr: :slap: :hsughr: :nec: :madr:
#8
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Put some scissor doors and altezza taillights on it
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Originally Posted by Nightshade
what a great wasste of research grants
Not really, it might lead to micro-surgery on clogged blood vessels and ducts in the body. I can just see it now a whole construction crew of nano-bots cleaning out my billiary tree and not needing to take the drugs twice a day.
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Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ...."WOW! What a ride!!!!!"
LUNCH with THEOLDMAN...On a break for now...